Background
Ford, Joseph Dillon was born on February 6, 1952 in Americus, Georgia, United States. Son of William Lamar and Julia King (Dillon) F. Bachelor of Fine Arts, Florida International University, 1975.
artist composer educator landscape designer
Ford, Joseph Dillon was born on February 6, 1952 in Americus, Georgia, United States. Son of William Lamar and Julia King (Dillon) F. Bachelor of Fine Arts, Florida International University, 1975.
Master of Arts, Harvard University, 1978. M Landscape Architecture, Florida International University, 1991. Teachers assistant Dade County Public School System, Miami, Florida, 1979-1980.
Music professor Miami-Dade Community College, 1980-1982;teacher The American School Tangier (Morocco), 1982-1983.
Member administrative staffNew World School of the Arts, 1989. Former member academic music faculty South campus Miami-Dade Community College.
Instructor landscape architecture Florida International University, 1992. Board of directors, secretary South. Florida Chamber Ensemble, 1979-1980.
Variell scholar Harvard University, 1976, 77.
He holds undergraduate degrees in music and graduate degrees in both musicology and landscape architecture. His major works include a symphony, a piano concerto, a harpsichord concerto, choral music, and a large quantity of chamber and solo works for the piano and other instruments. Although most of his oeuvre is tonal—often very traditionally so, he has also produced non-tonal work using both acoustic and electronic media, and has developed synthetic chromatic dialects amenable to both idioms.
Keenly interested in emergent music and telecommunications technologies and the rich potential they offer for international creative collaborations, he also conceived and brought to fruition numerous large-scale projects in which his interdisciplinary artistic background has proven to be an especially useful asset.
These include the world’s largest sound sculpture, an ongoing Web-based work that commemorates the monumental “Standing Buddhas of Bamiyan” demolished by the Taliban in 2001. The “Westron Wynde” Project (begun in 2004), for which composers in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom each contributed music for James J. Pellerite (former principal flutist of the Philadelphia Orchestra).
The Delian Suites Nos. 1 through 5 (2005-2009), each exploring various tonal idioms (Number 4 in cooperation with the Colloque Fou de Basson, Conservatoire Gabriel Fauré, Angoulême).
Nu Mu Unlimited (2006-2009), the world’s first virtual new music festival.
And Ye New Music Fayre (2008-2009), a seminal event featuring new music composed in traditional tonal and modal styles. He presently resides in Gainesville, Florida, United States.
In recent years he has published online Orpheus in the Twenty-first Century: Historicism and the Art-Music Renascence (2003), a multimedia e-book on music aesthetics. Chromatic One: A New Technique for Instrumental Speech (2003), a monograph detailing an innovative art form fusing music and spoken language. And numerous articles, poems, and short works of fiction.
Board directors, secretary South Florida Chamber Ensemble, 1979—1980. Member of Phi Kappa Phi.